Week 3 Biological Anthropology
Weekly Topics and subtopics
Primates
Human as Primates and Modern Human Adaptations
Paleoanthropology
The Illusion of Race
Humans are special among mammals for sure, but we are definite primates. Understanding the array of traits that make us human and the way that variation is distributed in humans around the world is essential for understanding the visible differences. Both migration and natural selection have played a role in human global diversity, and the genetics do not support the dividing humans into biological groups based on geography or skin tone. The concept of race is flawed, and race is not real is a scientific sense. But race is very real socio-politically. Anthropologists do not support continued use of racial constructs in social policy.